Blog

Notes from our desk.

Considered, longer-form writing: organisation news, transparency and FOI commentary, service updates, and posts from our partners.

They Vote For You

23 March 2022

Senator for NSW Andrew Bragg threatens OpenAustralia Foundation with legal action

Liberal Party Senator Andrew Bragg has stepped up his campaign against the OpenAustralia Foundation. The senator has hired high profile lawyer Rebekah Giles to threaten legal action over…
Announcement, They Vote For You

31 January 2022

A new category has been added to your representative’s voting records!

You may have noticed that your MP and senator voting records are looking a bit different. Voting records are now divided into nine different categories: Voted consistently for…
OpenAustralia.org, They Vote For You

3 December 2021

Productive discussions and pointed attacks

It’s been a busy few weeks for They Vote For You. We’ve benefited from a surge in interest despite, or because of, some very pointed attacks by two…
PlanningAlerts.org.au

13 September 2021

Putting Councillors to Bed in PlanningAlerts

This week we’re removing councillors, and the ability to write to councillors from PlanningAlerts. We disabled the feature in 2019. Now we’re removing the functionality from the code…
Announcement, RightToKnow.org.au

30 March 2021

Right to Know Pro For Journalists, Researchers, Academics, Campaigners, and FOI professionals.

A new way to make FOI requests, for professionals Since we launched Right to Know we’ve regularly heard from journalists, who would love to use Right to Know,…
Announcement, OpenAustralia.org

13 January 2021

Thank You for All Your Comments

Today we removed the ability for people to comment on speeches published at openaustralia.org.au We’re taking a pause on letting anyone comment on OpenAustralia because, in our work…
RightToKnow.org.au, Uncategorized

4 November 2020

How we deal with moderation on Right to Know

There have recently been a few articles published in The Guardian about a request on Right to Know that we were asked to moderate. As one of the…
Planning, PlanningAlerts.org.au

29 September 2020

The story of a tiny, almost invisible change
OpenAustralia.org, They Vote For You, Uncategorized

17 April 2020

Last week in Parliament

You may have been reading about the unsuccessful amendments to the Coronavirus Economic Response Package that opposition MPs and Senators attempted to pass last week. The amendments related…
They Vote For You, Uncategorized

20 March 2020

Coronavirus and our Federal Parliament

Our federal parliament is scheduled to sit next week but, due to the Coronavirus pandemic, it’s going to look a bit different. On Wednesday, the Prime Minister released…